Big imagination at Charlie's Factory

Oompa loompa, do-ba-dee-doo! The highlight of the kids’ first visit to Australia, strangely enough, had nothing to do with kangaroos or koalas, wallabys or platapi, but rather Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: the Musical. We made it to the Capitol Theatre just in time (classic Jones style!), mandatorily checked our bags at the last minute, and took to our seats just as the curtain was coming up. Charlie was amazing - especially for his age - Willy Wonka was funny; the producers did a great job giving the other children some personality (although Mike TV still failed to engage us, as in the book) and most of all - they did an outstanding job with concept and execution of the Oompa loompas! These long-awaited half-puppets were definitely the stars of the show and the crowd went wild when they finally appeared in the first scene after the intermission. All in all, it was a really fun afternoon and the theme of imagination - you can see only if you believe - was highly inspiring for our Davy and little Meg, who has since added inventor to her list of target professions.

After the early afternoon musical experience, we walked home through Chinatown, where we ran into a real life candyman! There were actually many street food stalls there, serving up skewers, dim sum, bubble tea, etc. as well as one that caught our eye - it had just one simple item on the menu: Dragon’s beard candy. So dragon’s beard is actually really fine strands of sugar. The sugar starts off as a round block, which is then punctured using a pointy object that looks like a large drill bit (not sure if this was an “official” tool or more of an ad hoc innovation). The hole is gradually expanded as the sugar warms up, until it becomes a somewhat stiff ring. The chef continues to warm the sugar and stretch it, pulling it into an ever larger loop, which can eventually be twisted and folded in half, and then the process repeated. It was kind of similar to pulling noodles, except that there appeared to be more than seven stretching phases - perhaps up to 10. When the strands were finally deemed to have reached a sufficient fineness, the dragon’s beard was cut into sections and wrapped around a coconut-nut mixture, thus completing production of the candy. It was kind of hard to eat (falling apart more or less right away) but nutty, not too sweet, and after standing there, watching three batches be made - we could hardly not try any!

Further along the path, we came upon a really cool climbing park - it was good to see that Davy and Megan both seem to know how to have fun at their own capability levels and hadn’t completely forgotten how to chill with other kids their own age.Read more